What shall I say of the cook of the tramp pure and simple? Only this, I am afraid that, while he has a bitter, hard berth of it, he gets little better pay than his brother of the sailing ship. One consolation he has, and that not a little one--he has more to cook, and consequently he is, taken generally, a better workman. For there is nothing tends to disgust a man more, no matter of what trade he be, than the being compelled to make bricks without straw. And there can be no doubt that, hard as are the tramps in many respects for their crews, the food is much better than that provided in sailing ships, taking the average. Having such a rough crowd to cater for, however, does not tend to improve the quality of the cooks carried in tramp steamers. A decent man hardly cares to face the possibility of being violently assaulted, for no fault of his own, by members of a gang of ruffians of every nation under heaven save his own countrymen. And this is the state of affairs that any man in such a position as a cook holds must be prepared to face in most tramps. If he be fortunate enough to get into one of the north-east coast tramps, owned by canny firms, who like to have their ships manned by their own people, and whose highest ambition is to see efficiency combined with comfort on board of them, he will be as well off as any sea-cook, not an artist, can reasonably ask to be. CHAPTER XXIII. THE COOK (SAILING SHIPS). It may, perhaps, have appeared strange to many that, in dealing with the cook in the preceding chapter, I hardly mentioned anything about the materials with which he is called upon to deal. Most people have heard something about the badness of food in the Merchant Service, and therefore it might seem at first sight a great mistake to write a chapter on the sea-cook, and say nothing about the kind of food. My excuse must be, that in the kind of ships with which I have been dealing the food question rarely causes any trouble. In the finest steamships I doubt very much whether the workers are not fed quite as well as are any corresponding class of toilers ashore; and even in the lowest tramps there is not that general lack of decent food which does press so hardly upon the seamen in sailing ships.